“Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions.”

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.

Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.

Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.

The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.

This is what capitalism, the much abused profit system, has brought about and brings about daily anew. Yet, most present-day governments and political parties are eager to destroy this system.

The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation.

The philosophy underlying the system of progressive taxation is that the income and wealth of the well-to-do classes can be freely tapped.

There is but one means available to improve the material conditions of mankind: to accelerate the growth of capital accumulated as against the growth in population.

A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples want satisfaction.

Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

The fundamental law of the market is: the customer is always right.

The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.

I’m not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.

Whatever the history of U.S. intervention in Iraq, our priorities now should be to protect our people and defend our national security interests, not to try to resolve an intractable religious divide some 1,500 years in the making.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

Dysfunctional states like Afghanistan need business people who are deeply rooted in their country and invest in it. They can add stability.

When we are foolish God intervenes.

Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power.